Duterte heading to The Hague to face ICC charges linked to ‘war on drugs’
The former president of the Philippines is facing a charge of crimes against humanity.
A jet that took former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte from Manila landed on Wednesday in the Netherlands, a day after he was arrested on an International Criminal Court warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity over deadly anti-drugs crackdowns he oversaw while in office.
Rights groups and families of victims hailed Duterte’s arrest.
Within days, he will face an initial appearance where the court will confirm his identity, check that he understands the charges against him and set a date for a hearing to assess if prosecutors have sufficient evidence to send him to a full trial.
If his case goes to trial and he is convicted, the 79-year-old Duterte could face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The small jet taxied into a hangar where two buses were waiting. An ambulance also drove close to the hangar, and medics wheeled a gurney from the ambulance into the hangar.
The court did not immediately confirm whether Duterte was aboard the arriving plane, which made a stopover in Dubai during its flight from Manila, or that the former president was in court custody.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said Tuesday that police arrested Duterte when he returned from a trip to Hong Kong and sent him to the ICC.
Jerrie Abella of Amnesty International said: “This is a monumental and long-overdue step for justice for thousands of victims and their families.
“It is therefore a hopeful sign for them, as well, in the Philippines and beyond, as it shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, will face justice wherever they are in the world.”
Emily Soriano, the mother of a victim of the crackdowns, said she wanted more officials to face justice.
“Duterte is lucky he has due process, but our children who were killed did not have due process,” she said.
Duterte’s supporters, however, criticised his arrest as illegal and sought to have him returned home. Small groups of Duterte supporters and people who backed his arrest demonstrated on Wednesday outside the court before his arrival.
The ICC opened an inquiry in 2021 into mass killings linked to the so-called war on drugs overseen by Duterte when he served as mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao, and later as president.
Estimates of the death toll during Duterte’s presidential term vary, from the more than 6,000 that the national police have reported and up to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
ICC judges who looked at prosecution evidence supporting their request for his arrest found “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Duterte is individually responsible for the crime against humanity of murder” as an “indirect co-perpetrator for having allegedly overseen the killings when he was mayor of Davao and later president of the Philippines,” according to his warrant.
